Wednesday, October 07, 2015

Repentance Isn't This Nor Is It This Complicated -- Please

My attention was drawn to an article at Proclaim & Defend on repentance by John Mincy. After giving his take on why repentance is a controversial issue, he begins explaining that what John the Baptist preached was "sanctification repentance," the repenting already converted people do on a regular basis after they've already been converted.

John the Baptist, according to Mincy, is preaching to Jews in the covenant community to repent like one would after he's been saved, but in this case to keep in good covenantal standing in an apostate nation Israel. It's an impossible, completely convoluted take on John's preaching. The repentance of John was for the remission of sins. It was the same repentance that Jesus preached. John and Jesus were not preaching different messages, different gospels, two different meanings of repentance.

John preached repentance in Mark 1 and in Mark 2 Jesus called sinners to repentance, not the righteous. Neither Jesus nor John were calling the righteous to repent. Both John and Jesus preached, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." This is not complicated. Their audiences needed to repent or go to hell. Those who did not go to heaven would end instead in hell. If you keep reading in Matthew 3, John was preparing the way for the Lord. He prepared them to receive the king. They needed to turn to their king, to their Messiah. He had arrived and they needed to repent. John was the herald of Jesus, the kerux of Jesus, so he was delivering the same message as the King. They wouldn't have the king or the kingdom if they didn't turn around. These weren't converted people.

The long expected reign of the Messiah had arrived in Palestine and John was preaching that. John preached that, not because they were ready, but because they were not ready. As you move further in Matthew 3, John's message wasn't one of sanctification, but one of fiery wrath. They were a generation of vipers, who were warned to flee from the wrath to come. If they did not repent, they would be burned up like chaff in a fire. This was a warning of hell.

The same message that John the Baptist preached is what Jonah preached to Nineveh in Jonah 3:9, "Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?" Jesus echoed this when He said, "Repent or perish" (Luke 13:3-5). This was the same message He told His disciples to preach when He gave them the great commission in Luke 24:47, "that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem."

Those in the Jewish nation could become a part of the kingdom through personal conversion. They weren't going to get into the kingdom just because they were in the nation. Everyone needed to repent personally, and then they could. It's obvious that repentance was salvific, not a repeated act of sanctification. No way.

There are so many problems with Mincy's presentation. He perverts repentance so much that it would take an article three times the length of his to correct it all. Someone should start with what I've written so far. Mincy suggests that repentance started taking a new meaning with the apostles, differing than even what Jesus and John preached, that he calls "justification-repentance" in contrast to the "sanctification-repentance" of the gospels. The justification repentance is essentially the repent of your unbelief that you hear from Hyles-types. A person wasn't trusting in Christ and when he starts trusting, he has repented in his mind of that lack of trust. Whereas he wasn't believing before, now he is, and that's repentance among those who preach what the Hyles-types preach. What Mincy presents is completely, absolutely wrong. There's no way to get what he says from a plain meaning of the text.

Mincy attempts to use Geerhardus Vos to support his view and in so doing completely misrepresents what Vos himself taught about repentance, who wrote (Geerhardus Vos, The Kingdom of God and the Church, P&R, 1972, pp. 92-93):

Our Lord’s idea of repentance is as profound and comprehensive as His conception of righteousness. Of the three words that are used in the Greek Gospels to describe the process, one emphasizes the emotional element of regret, sorrow over the past evil course of life, metamelomai; Matt. 12:29-32; a second expresses reversal of the entire mental attitude, metanoeo, Matt. 12:41, Luke 11:32; 15:7, 10; the third denotes a change in the direction of life, one goal being substituted for another, epistrephomai; Matt. 13:15 (and parallels); Luke 17;4, 22:32. Repentance is not limited to any single faculty of the mind: it engages the entire man, intellect, will and affections… Again, in the new life which follows repentance the absolute supremacy of God is the controlling principle. He who repents turns away from the service of mammon and self to the service of God.

Mincy uses Vos out of context to teach a view he would never have taught.

If the gospel is the core or the boundary, however evangelicals or fundamentalists want to explain it, what happens if they can't agree on the gospel itself? Do mere portions of the gospel became the sole basis of fellowship, unity, or separation? Doctrine already has been diminished to the gospel. At what point does the minimization stop?

John Mincy is Board Emeritus for the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship International. I think it is safe to say that there are those on some of the FBFI boards who absolutely disagree with Mincy about this, while others would have really appreciated his article. His article is not just poorly done, but it perverts scripture and the gospel. It is not what the Bible teaches about salvation. What's more important to the FBFI? Is it clarity on the gospel or the politics of fundamentalism?

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Our Word of Truth Conference for 2015, which is November 11-15, will be on the gospel. For the next few years we will have sessions in the morning dealing with the gospel from which we will write a book, like we did with A Pure Church from the first three years of the Word of Truth Conference. You will be able to get the audio from the conference and likely the video from the morning sessions. You can listen to past conferences here at the conference website and see past videos here from the conference at youtube.

I'd be interested to know what you men think of the interpretation given of John 16:8-9. I have had heard this interpretation many times before. The author says, "John explains the sin as being disbelief, not trusting in Christ."

But upon examination of the text, we find that the passage says, "Of sin, because they believe not on me." Is it just me, or is that a strange way to interpret the English language? It would seem to say that the reason that their sin is reproved is because they must see their need to believe on Christ. How in the world does "Of sin, because..." mean that what follows "because" defines "sin".

It seems that this is yet another place where the scripture is twisted so that the definition of repentance can be altered to match a theology that must allow for lots of converts, little to no change. Do you think I'm on the right track here?

I believe that unbelief is the cause of sin. If the sinner got the remedy of sin, he would not need this particular reproving. Unbelief directly connects to the love of sin, of pride in particular, which keeps him going his own way, thinking he's fine.

In addition, I wouldn't take that verse as a proof text of that particular view, that the sin of unbelief is the sin singular that the Holy Spirit comes to convict, versus the conviction of sin in general. The Bible isn't ambiguous, but there is enough ambiguity in that verse with the Greek word hoti (translated "because," but can be translated or understood a great many different ways), that no one could conclude that it is saying that unbelief is the sin that the Holy Spirit is convincing a sinner of. I believe there is a greater basis to say that He convicts a person of sin so that he will believe, that he is being convicted of that sin, because he hasn't. Conviction of sin is a basis for someone believing. A lot of other translations go with "because" too -- the KJV translators were right.

I think it is amazing that an article like this garners no attention, not one other reaction. Ho hum. Who cares? This is where we're at today. I still have a hard time believing it. Do people really agree with him? This is the position that fundamentalists, the FBF, takes. Is it an acceptable position? Really? Maybe it is, and I didn't know it. If I wrote something on dress or KJVO, I get a ton of reaction, but this, a blip. Maybe no one cares or they just don't know what they believe or what scripture teaches.

It may be that no one reacts because we had a big discussion of it here a few months ago (with Greg and Don, etc).

But I agree with you. The FBFI host church a few years ago banned a couple of seminaries from displaying at the annual meeting because the presidents of those seminaries appeared at the same conference as a Southern Baptist. Not because those presidents and the SBCer have a different gospel, which, given the host church's pastor's affinity for Lou Martuneac as well as the presidents' and SBCer's Calvinism (of varying degrees), they probably do.

Bro. Brandenburg - I think the lack of response here is that Mincy's position is clearly wrong to those that read here. It is obvious to even the casual reading of the passages in question that John the Baptist was not preaching sanctification repentance.

I will admit that I was surprised to see Mincy twist such a clear passage. But then again, all he is really doing is creating doubt on a passage that goes against his system. Even if he is unsuccessful in convincing one his position is correct, he ends up undermining the unsuspecting individual that previously held the correct interpretation to pause and become not so firm on it - also an effective strategy of Satan.

His position is obviously flimsy. But the larger problem is that so many today just take authority figures at their word rather than search the Scriptures to see if those things be true.

What Mincy is preaching is very different than what I preach. I guess I didn't know things were this bad, that what he is preaching is acceptable. I knew it existed in Hylesism and all the offshoots, and, it wouldn't surprise me if Lou Martuneac taught it (he must be excited about this), but there is obviously big at least positional division about the gospel in this branch of fundamentalism OR there isn't as much different between the branches as I would have thought. It also is some kind of theological system or hermeneutic. I'm saying it is bigger and deeper than what I would have thought.

Mincy is a contributor in the two books on textual criticism from the BJU near orbit with Minnick and others, Mind of God to Mind of Man and God's Word in Our Hands. It looks like what draws these men together is their opposition to the King James Version, not the gospel. They say the version issue is a non-essential, act like it is essential, then they say the gospel is essential, and act like it is non-essential. I don't think I'm wrong on this. This is the truth, despite the stage craft that are intended to look otherwise.

What is a coalition that is so discombobulated on the gospel? If fundamentalism won't divide here, what's the point of their position on separation?

Now I'm "just" a layman, but it looks to me like Brother Brandenburg is just looking to cause division, making the proverbial mountain out of - - - you know. Dr. Minci is simply ( in a way that seems stretched and unnecessary to me to be sure) trying to show why repentance is necessary for both salvation and sanctification. Certainly, no one can argue against that, can he? I see no reason to use qualifiers to discuss the reality of repentance on both sides of our conversion, but neither do I see the necessity of castigating a brother for his attempt to clarify. Am I missing something significant? Don't we all recognize the need for repentance at salvation? Or is that the issue at the heart of the main theological divide?

OK.....I promised myself never to comment over here again.....but I just spit up my milk and my cereal when I read Kent say about Martuneac "he must be excited about this!" ..... oh my word ..... that was too funny. Kent....I'm not ready to comment on if I think you've understood John correctly &/or your response....I need to read and re-read both of you before I do that. Haven't forgotten to post the theology of the IFCA graph you wrote me about more than a year ago. Have been distracted with other projects. Eventually I'll get to it. Straight Ahead. jt

Very good comment. I think you are bullseye. Where are people learning this? I could have gone much further than I did in critique. For instance, right away, is it really that people are trying to bridge the gap between two extremes, attempting to find the sweet spot? Maybe that's how they approach theology. If they do, it's no wonder they get it wrong. They need to apply laws of exegesis and then look at history to make sure it isn't something new.

Is this covenant community idea prevalent? Maybe I don't get out enough. It seemed like a kind of hyper-dispensationalism, which is why I said it was a hermeneutic and a system here, not just the gospel. Is this what BJU has been teaching? How wide is the acceptable range of teaching?

I'm just trying to cause division. Really? Division between what and what? Who am I dividing? There is already doctrinal division. People are not saying the same thing. Isn't saying the same thing what Paul said unity was? Unity isn't saying different things about the gospel and then agreeing to disagree. These are differences.

I often tell people, you can say you believe in Jesus, but if you think He's a jar of peanut butter, you don't believe in Jesus. You can say that you believe in repentance, but if it isn't what the Bible teaches, it isn't repentance. We should divide on that, because something falling short of a biblical gospel requires division (Gal 1:6-9). Isn't the false gospel "causing division," not me? Why am I the one causing division? When someone goes to hell because he doesn't repent, because it isn't biblical repentance, won't my "division" be worth it? Please think about it.

You know what I'm saying. Are you saying that you don't know what John Mincy is saying? Should we really be trying to bridge a gap with people saying what he's saying or just attempting to put what he's saying in the acceptable category? What good will that do?

When you say "straight ahead"? John the Baptist was making crooked roads straight? Someone on a crooked road isn't going straight ahead. He's going crooked. We might say "straight ahead," but we shouldn't call crooked "straight."

What if when I talked to you, I prefaced it with, "I told myself I wouldn't talk to you again." I didn't know you had told yourself that. Why are you telling me that you said that to yourself? Why do people like you have to say that? It's pretty regular. You really are OK talking to me. It doesn't mean you are agreeing with everything that I believe. If I'm orthodox on the gospel and John Mincy is not -- you decide that -- maybe you could say to someone like him, "I told myself I wasn't going to talk to someone like you," as a preface to your conversation with him.

Just feel free to talk here. If you get criticized by some hierarchy that's out there, don't worry about it. I don't worry about it. Should I? This seems to be a fundamentalist thing.

I say this all with a smile on my face, yeah, even around a campfire on my lawn chair.

The statement on not coming back here was mostly made in fun because of the way we sometimes see things differently. I was only commenting that the point you made about Lou was hilarious. I'm happy to comment on the content of your disagreement but I'm not ready to because I'm not sure I completely understand John's point and I don't think you have rightly represented John's point.....but until I'm more clear on what both of you are saying.....I'll watch for now. Straight Ahead seeded to confuse you......let me try another one.....carry on! jt

You are the only one that I've read that says that I'm misrepresenting John Mincy here. I don't have any personal beef with him. When I read the article, I started it with a positive mindset. The article itself led to the negative mindset. There was a lot shocking, and I mean shocking, about the article. Reading it is what informed what I wrote in my article. I had zero predisposition. I would have thought he said the same thing as me on this issue. Personally, I have never read anyone explain it like he does, but I'm guessing those people are out there. Maybe Chafer takes this same position and that wouldn't surprise me, because it makes sense that Dallas would have someone teaching like this. I didn't know it was a BJU thing. Someone who favors the Mincy position wrote in an email that he and I differ, but he didn't say I misrepresented John Mincy. This is someone who isn't superficial in his approach to theology.

Does someone besides JT believe that I'm misrepresenting John Mincy? How? I'd be happy to hear. Why would I misrepresent him? I have no reason to do that.

In the New Testament, John the Baptist bursts on the scene preaching repentance, and every one seems to know what he is talking about. The Old Testament has many references to repentance; these provide the backdrop for what I call “sanctification-repentance,” dealing with God’s relationship to His covenant people. These passages help us as Christians to realize our responsibility to keep on repenting of sins that the Holy Spirit points out to us through the Word. Verses in Luke 17:3, II Corinthians 12:21, and Revelation 2:5 are New Testament examples of “sanctification-repentance.” The Old Testament saints, “like Christians, being covenant people, are privileged to return to God on the grounds of their covenant by repentance.”[1] For the most part, the preaching of John and Jesus was directed to a covenant people and was, therefore, calling them back to God to prepare for His coming Kingdom.

Supposedly John the Baptist was just calling back to himself people that are already saved, he says. But what does the first Baptist actually say in Matthew 3?

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?8 Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance:9 And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.10 And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

He says that these "covenant people" are not saved folks who just need to return to Him in "sanctification repentance." He says that they are going to be in the eternal fires of hell unless they repent. Those that repent are baptized by the Baptist. Is baptism for those who are converted and newly saved, or is it an ordinance that is repeated whenever people who are allegedy already saved repent again in a "sanctification repentance"?

The OT prophets warned Israel of their need to repent and become true children of God also, and Paul explained in Romans 9-11 how most in Israel were not saved. His position may be what Lewis Sperry Chafer, who rejected repentance for salvation, taught, but it is certainly not what the Bible teaches, nor is it Baptist doctrine.

My point was that Chafer had a very strong dispensationalist stance on the Gospels. It was to the point where he viewed the "disconnect" between Israel and the Church so strongly that he basically advocated that only Acts and the Epistles were for the church. For example, he said that the Sermon on the Mount and almost all of Jesus' teaching was for Israel alone.

This kind of hermeneutic may be driving the contention that John the Baptist's preaching and Jesus' offer of the Kingdom was only really for the OT covenant people of Israel - thus it was a call for "sanctification-repentance."

I don't believe you're dealing with a false Gospel here. I think what Mincy is displaying is an old-school, very hard-line Chaferian-like dispensationalism. Did you notice that every text he cited for the "justification repentance" is from Acts and beyond, but never from the Gospels?! He also wrote, "we really need to look at the post-Pentecost preaching to understand what our message of repentance should be today, especially those messages to Gentiles."

You're basically looking at Chafer's dispensationalist hermeneutic, which was characterized by a very hard disconnect between Israel and the Church. Read Chafer's discussion from his Systematic on whether the Sermon on the Mount is for Christians, and you'll see it all right there.

Thanks for your comment. I do believe that a kind of dispensationalism, maybe hyper-dispensationalism, because it read like hyperdispensationalism, is mixed with what Mincy is teaching. You're saying his teaching proceeds from his form of dispensationalism. I'm not sure about that, which is why I didn't write it in the post. I mentioned Chafer in the comment section, I believe before you ever commented, and I know that there is a mixture here, but I wasn't sure either that this was strictly Chaferian. I thought there was more here than that, although a heavy dosage of it.

I'll come back later here, because you are the first in public to say "no false gospel," just a hermeneutial snafu. I want to deal with what you are saying. I already said that the hermeneutic is a deeper problem, but all false doctrine comes from some kind of wrong hermeneutic.

It is a big mistake to make a corollary between Chafer and the Free Grace folks like Hodges and Wilkins. I've read all of Chafer's soteriology. He believed in repentance very strongly; he just believed it was a component of saving faith. It was a weird distinction without any real difference. What the Free Grace folks have done is take this and run off to left field. Their positions are not the same.

I may be wasting my time explaining what Chafer wrote, because most people haven't actually read his soteriology. They go off mis-characterizations and half-truths. If you take another look at Chafer's Systematic, you'll probably have a better feeling about him.

I think his distinction about making repentance a necessary component of saving faith is wrong and ripe for abuse. Repentance isn't a part of saving faith; it's a seperate act. Both are required.

I know nothing about Mincy. I'd never heard his name before this blog post. If he's following Chafer's line, then I'm not worried about a false gospel. I'm assuming he's simply following Chafer.

Here is one relevant quote from Chafer's discussion on the faith and repentance issue:

“It is as dogmatically stated as language can declare, that repentance is essential to salvation and that none can be saved apart from repentance, but it is included in believing and could not be separated from it," (Systematic, 3:373).

When the Free Grace folks talk about "no repentance," I don't think they mean the same thing as Chafer. He believed in repentance.

Thanks for the comment. That is a statement that could be great, but it could also be endorsed by Zane Hodges. So where was Chafer? Let's see what else he said:

“God’s call to the unsaved is never said to be unto the Lordship of Christ . . . no more important obligation rests on the preacher than that of preaching the Lordship of Christ to Christians exclusively, and the Saviorhood of Christ to those who are unsaved. A suggestion born of this theme is that in all gospel preaching every reference to the life to be lived beyond regeneration should be avoided as far as possible. To attend to this is not a deception nor a withholding of the truth from those to whom it applies” (pgs. 385-388, Systematic Theology, vol. 3, Lewis Sperry Chafer. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1993).

"On account of its subtlety due to its pious character, no confusing intrusion into the doctrine that salvation is conditioned alone upon believing is more effective than the added demand that the unsaved must dedicate themselves to do God’s will in their daily life, as well as to believe upon Christ." (Chafer, "Terms of Salvation" in his Systematic Theology. While he divides surrender and belief into two distinct things, he is really arguing that saving faith does not involve surrender as a constituent element.)

"The most subtle, self-satisfying form of works of merit is, after all, found to be an engaging feature in this practice of applying to unbelievers the Lordship of Christ." (ibid)

Sadly, Bro Robbins, I think your defense of Chafer is incorrect and the assessment below is far more accurate:

Nearly all the leading advocates of the no-lordship gospel were associated with Dallas Theological Seminary. In fact, Dr. James M. Boice, who wrote powerfully in defense of "lordship salvation" long before I entered the fray, referred to their view as "the Dallas Doctrine."

The pedigree of no-lordship doctrine at Dallas Seminary is traceable back to founder Lewis Sperry Chafer. The doctrine apparently stemmed from Chafer's misguided attempts to develop a uniquely dispensationalist soteriology. Chafer (together with other early dispensationalists, including C. I. Scofield) was so zealous to eliminate every vestige of law from the dispensation of grace that he embraced a kind of antinomianism. That was the seed from which the no-lordship gospel sprouted. (http://www.gty.org/resources/articles/A100/a-15year-retrospective-on-the-lordship-controversy)

I don't want to be seen as the apologist for Chafer. My only point was that Mincy was simply faithfully following Chafer.

Chafer had many problems, and I think his overzealous dispensationalism made him write some strange things. For instance, in a few unguarded moments he suggested that the way of salvation was different in the OT. Scofield did the same thing in his original study Bible. This is what happens when you emphasize such a radical disconnect between Israel and the Church as he did. I will say that it is particularly foolish for anybody from GTY to suggest that Chafer embraced a kind of antinomionism.

I also agree that the Free Grace folks sprang from the seed of Chafer's theology. However, they are certainly not one and the same. I've listened to Bob Wilkins, and the man is a heretic. He is not the same as Chafer at all.

After reading Mincy's second article, I do not believe he preaches a "repentance-less" Gospel, and I don't think Chafer did, either.

I sense we're not really getting anywhere here. I'm not particularly interested enough to continue discussing Chafer. He's dead and gone. If you want to discuss repentance, then ask away. I affirm surrender and Lordship. I use Prov 28:13 when I discuss repentance, and explain that it involves both (1) honest confession for sins as an offense against God, and (2) a real, honest determination to forsake those sins. It's a conscious exchange of loyalty from Satan to God, brought about by the Holy Spirit.

I have to defer to you on whether Mincy absolutely represents, is identical to, Chafer. I immediately thought Chafer had influenced him, and thought it was interesting, but I have a hard enough time remembering everything in the Bible, let alone Chafer and others like him, so I choose to attempt to remember the Bible, as I'm sure you do. My mind, however, says he isn't identical to Chafer. I still believe what I said, and that is, it's a mix of Chafer and other stuff, or maybe how you describe it, Chafer is the seed of it. But you've read Mincy, and it's obvious he is being very careful to not have it be actual repentancce that is part of the gospel.

You tell me what the gospel is, and it's clear that is what is in the gospels, but you leave room for what Mincy says as the gospel. They are different. Is the gospel really that wide ranging. I think people still get saved with a gospel like Mincy preaches, but mainly not. My opinion doesn't matter on who does and who doesn't. It's just short of what scripture teaches and someone might be lost because of it. Either what you say is repentance is what it is, or it isn't. If it is, then Mincy is wrong. You say he's less right, unless I'm wrong about what you're saying. It is very different, what he's saying.

Am I misrepresenting or not understanding Mincy. I think I fully understand him. Besides the fact that he is confusing, because he is saying something unbiblical, I get what he is saying. It is easy to see how he's framing it, what he's leaving out, how he's defining things. I never said he couldn't be understood. I said he was wrong, and FBF website so far is the only place that says I'm misunderstanding and misrepresenting. I'm fine being shown how I am, but I don't think so.

Dr. Mincy was an hour down the road from me, but I didn't know he believed this way. I considered us in fellowship the first 5 or so years I was in California. When I left fundamentalism, he was one of two who said anything to me, but all he said was a letter in answer to mine, that said he disagreed. He didn't say how he disagreed. It was just one line. The other guy, by the way, wondered if he had offended me, and he hadn't. I didn't leave out of personal offense and this about Mincy wasn't that. It was just amazing what he wrote, I thought, and that the FBF published it.

Let me say this. That article would do nothing but completely confuse an average Christian. It's awful. I would never suggest that a church member read that article.

There certainly is such a thing as a Christian maintaining a lifestyle characterized by a real drive for personal holiness and continual confession of sins. 1 Jn 1:9 is addressed to Christians, and the bit about "confessing our sins" is a present, active verb.

However, the basic meaning of repentance is still the same whether you're a Christian or not. It still involves (1) honest confession of sins and (2) a forsaking of those sins (Prov 28:13). It's a confession of disloyalty to God and a heartfelt desire to put Christ as Lord, and this desire is proven by action.

To drive a hard wedge between "sanctification repentance" and "justification repentance" is confusing and unnecessarily obscure. As you said, repentance isn't this complicated.

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About Me

I got lots of learnin when I was in cemetery. I also gots books I try to read. I has preecht throo most of the books of the Bible spositorally. I is marreed and has 4 youngins---3 is gurlz. Me am indipendint Babtist. Pleeez reed my blog.